Personal items such as luggage and other travel items may occasionally be misplaced or mishandled, thereby creating a need to locate the lost items or objects. The prior art provides examples of locator systems that may be based on radio frequency transmissions. For example, commercial products exist that require use of a transmitter and receiver pair. Generally, a transmitter may be disposed on an item prone to be misplaced and a receiver unit may be used to locate (e.g., by triangulation) the transmitter from a distance. However, the need for an owner of the item to operate, maintain, and keep accessible a receiver may make these solutions inconvenient. For example, some location systems or devices may not be practical for the general population because of the complexity of using the receiver. Also, the need to have the receiver accessible to locate the lost item may be as problematic as losing the item(s). Moreover, as transceivers are generally limited in range based on federal communication commission (FCC) regulations, the receiver may only be useful for pinpointing the item within a relatively close vicinity to the receiver. Other systems exist, where device range may be greater, but the complexity of using these systems may also increase.
In some cases, tracking movement of an item may not be necessary. In some cases, accuracy of location of a lost item may not need to be very precise. For example, in the case of lost luggage, it may be desirable to simply determine if the luggage arrived in the same city or whether it was routed to a different city or geographic region. In this case, location of a general geographic location may be primarily required. For travel luggage, knowledge of a general region (e.g., a city, an airport, etc.) in which the luggage is currently located may be desired rather than a precise coordinate. In these situations, determining a geolocation of an item may be desired. Generally, geolocation is the identification of a real-world geographic location of an object. Commercial geolocation services may exist but are generally not practical for locating personal items such as bags because of the high cost of the service or of the devices involved with the service. For example, geolocation services currently exist for locating an unknown radio transmitter on Earth using space-based satellites and Earth-based receiving stations. These services may be used by the military and large commercial entities for specific missions. These services may be too costly and unavailable for any retail or consumer applications such as locating travel luggage.